


Legal Assassin

by MercuryAlice



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Altered Mental States, Dissociation, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Gore, M/M, extreme violence, repo man!thranduil, repo! crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-12
Updated: 2015-02-12
Packaged: 2018-03-12 01:30:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3338960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryAlice/pseuds/MercuryAlice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is the pen that whets itself in red and scrawls a signature on the dotted line of misplaced attention seeking. Always they seem to wonder why. And always it is a lie. They both know why, at least he has the grace to be honest about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Legal Assassin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [StongeOfTheGalaxium](https://archiveofourown.org/users/StongeOfTheGalaxium/gifts).



There is an inhumanness that comes part-and-parcel with repossession, a fundamental split that cracks through the center and tangents off into pockets of bleed-through that blur the careful lines. It starts as it ever does, with a translucent print off of imagined sins that drums sharpish nails against the fragile space between the doctor who swore no harm and the repo man who inflicts nothing but. 

That steady tappity tap gradually becomes a steady thumping until the glass cracks further, letting one bleed into the other and calling reality into question. Thranduil never thinks on the between time. 

Between the information and gloves sliding over his fingers. The moments that pass as his chin dips and his shoulders square. Between being a person and being something else. It all escapes him until the mask is clicked into place and suddenly he's somewhere and someone else, under an overpass or streetlight; a misbegotten scalpel turning rhythmically in his fingers as he finishes taking on the otherness. 

It becomes something of a game, noticing his whereabouts at that point. From the beep of a new hollow act of penance, to the blink of sudden awareness in a new space; only fractionally himself. The doctor locked quietly in his box, the repo man sees instead; a single blink returning him to the forefront. A different perspective that reads the very pavement from a different angle. Where one would see concrete, the other files every crack and fault with tiny mental tabs; in the interest of stepping light and reaching the destination without incident.

Tonight, there is no cement to greet him. Instead slate floor stretches out, a layer of plastic carefully laid out from corner to corner. He thinks perhaps he is beautifully efficient in his lapses. 

There's a brief, flickering few seconds of peace that ever follows; in which the monster stretches its claws out languidly, smiling back at its cage despite the innate knowledge that it will always return to it. But not now. Now, the bars far in its rear view mirror, it looks forward; eyes sweeping for its calling behind sheets of dark reinforced plastic. As ever, it finds the objective within three seconds.

A gagged objective. Beautiful efficiency at its finest. 

The doctor has officially left the building, having retreated to the willful ignorance of dissociation. Good riddance, is always the monster's opening thought.

The objective lifts its head in a charming show of fear. It is regret dressed up as fear, and he has not a single regard for it. He is the pen that whets itself in red and scrawls a signature on the dotted line of misplaced attention seeking. Always they seem to wonder why. And always it is a lie. They both know why, at least he has the grace to be honest about it. 

He exhales, a sound dangerously close to a reprimand. A breath reminiscent of a click of the tongue. Disappointment personified. One foot in front of the other, until a single stroke opens up skin in a stunning pantomime of slicing through his own irritation. Irritation tended not to bleed so prettily, nor did it whine in pain. Close enough. 

How difficult could it be to make the appropriate deposits in a timely fashion? Honestly, there was never a redeeming quality in any of them and this one was no different; its eyes shedding hollow and false tears of mock terror. If one invited debt into one's house, one owed it the courtesy of paying up.

A pause, and he knows the sack of meat and regret thinks he has reconsidered-- it is wrong-- and he returns; wasting no time in prying flesh from its moorings and letting metal embrace bone.

The sound of bone crunching is lost under the incessant screaming. Ribs forced to release their cage, releasing his prize by default. Occasionally he wonders why he wears gloves and longs for the viscera to melt through his fingers, but it is his lot in life to be ever reborn with thick plastic covering his hands. It is a pretty thought, just the same. 

Occasionally he thinks, in his more feral moments, that he should take over management. Those moments tend to coincide with moments of less than elegant violence, when he deliberately lets streaks of blood stain the small space of uncovered skin at the base of his throat in a petty shot at the doctor. The space that he allows by releasing the collar buttons just so. 

It is a vicious pay back that he revels in.

Why, when he isn't allowed a name or a permanent place in reality, should the doctor be allowed peace by his good grace? Why should he placate that insidious weakness? Let the doctor think on his own sin of weakness as he washes the temporary stain of blood from his obnoxiously long fair hair, he thinks as he is unnecessarily messy in his vitriol. The doctor should be thankful of the allowance to return at all. And red always suited him better, anyway.

"It's a thankless job." There is a note of genuine misfortune in his voice, not so much self pity as a pity for the rest of the world in his absence. He sighs. "But somebody's got to do it."

The sentiment is, of course, lost on the thing as its eyes glaze over. Losing a heart would do that to a person. Perhaps they should have paid for it, then. Instead, the now still organ drops from the butcher's hand into a familiar box; lid slammed shut and label slapped in place.

A pathetically dull day at the office.

The lines begin to blur at the edges again, as the doctor senses his avoided obligation passing, and when his eyes open after another long blink, the monster is again curled in its cage as if it never stepped foot out of it.

Thranduil's fingers twitch at his sides, before the scalpel is laid to rest on the table, and he finishes as he always does; placing the cold box in its place to be delivered. On the label is a name he vaguely recognizes but cannot place until the glass between his respective selves has mended.

'Bard; Heart Recall. Debt to be resolved.'

Somewhere, in his pitch dark mental recesses, the monster fairly cackles as the doctor's breath halts mid-inhale.


End file.
